DBMS > Cassandra vs. Firebase Realtime Database vs. Lovefield vs. Machbase Neo vs. Riak TS

System Properties Comparison Cassandra vs. Firebase Realtime Database vs. Lovefield vs. Machbase Neo vs. Riak TS

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Wide-column store based on ideas of BigTable and DynamoDB

Optimized for write access

Cloud-hosted realtime document store. iOS, Android, and JavaScript clients share one Realtime Database instance and automatically receive updates with the newest data.

Embeddable relational database for web apps written in pure JavaScript

TimeSeries DBMS for AIoT and BigData

Riak TS is a distributed NoSQL database optimized for time series data and based on Riak KV

Primary database model

Secondary database models

Vector DBMS

starting with release V5

DB-Engines Ranking measures the popularity of database management systems
Trend Chart

Score	101.89
Rank	#12	Overall
	#1	Wide column stores

Score	14.29
Rank	#39	Overall
	#6	Document stores

Score	0.29
Rank	#293	Overall
	#133	Relational DBMS

Score	0.12
Rank	#339	Overall
	#30	Time Series DBMS

Score	0.20
Rank	#319	Overall
	#27	Time Series DBMS

Website

cassandra.apache.org

firebase.google.com/products/realtime-database

google.github.io/lovefield

machbase.com

Technical documentation

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

firebase.google.com/docs/database

github.com/google/lovefield/blob/master/docs/spec_index.md

machbase.com/dbms

www.tiot.jp/riak-docs/riak/ts/latest

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

Google

acquired by Google 2014

Google

Machbase

Open Source, formerly Basho Technologies

Initial release

2008

2012

2014

2013

2015

Current release

4.1.3, July 2023

2.1.12, February 2017

V8.0, August 2023

3.0.0, September 2022

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache version 2

commercial

Open Source

Apache 2.0

commercial

free test version available

Open Source

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

yes

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

Providers of DBaaS offerings, please contact us to be listed.

Astra DB: Multi-cloud DBaaS built on Apache Cassandra.

Implementation language

Java

JavaScript

Erlang

Server operating systems

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

hosted

server-less, requires a JavaScript environment (browser, Node.js)

tested with Chrome, Firefox, IE, Safari

Linux
macOS
Windows

Linux
OS X

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

schema-free

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

XML support

Some form of processing data in XML format, e.g. support for XML data structures, and/or support for XPath, XQuery or XSLT.

Secondary indexes

restricted

only equality queries, not always the best performing solution

yes

restricted

SQL

Support of SQL

SQL-like SELECT, DML and DDL statements (CQL)

SQL-like query language

via JavaScript builder pattern

SQL-like query language

yes, limited

APIs and other access methods

Proprietary protocol

CQL (Cassandra Query Language, an SQL-like language)
Thrift

Android
iOS
JavaScript API
RESTful HTTP API

gRPC
HTTP REST
JDBC
MQTT (Message Queue Telemetry Transport)
ODBC

HTTP API
Native Erlang Interface

Supported programming languages

C#
C++
Clojure
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

Java
JavaScript
Objective-C

JavaScript

C
C#
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript
PHP

via ODBC
Python
R

via ODBC
Scala

unofficial client library
C#
C++

unofficial client library
Clojure

unofficial client library
Dart

unofficial client library
Erlang
Go

unofficial client library
Groovy

unofficial client library
Haskell

unofficial client library
Java
JavaScript

unofficial client library
Lisp

unofficial client library
Perl

unofficial client library
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

unofficial client library
Smalltalk

unofficial client library

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

limited functionality with using 'rules'

Erlang

Triggers

yes

Callbacks are triggered when data changes

Using read-only observers

yes

pre-commit hooks and post-commit hooks

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

no "single point of failure"

none

Sharding

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

selectable replication factor

Representation of geographical distribution of servers is possible

none

selectable replication factor

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

can be individually decided for each write operation

Eventual Consistency

if the client is offline
Immediate Consistency

if the client is online

Eventual Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

links between datasets can be stored

Transaction concepts

Support to ensure data integrity after non-atomic manipulations of data

Atomicity and isolation are supported for single operations

yes

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

yes, by using IndexedDB or the cloud service Firebase Realtime Database

yes

In-memory capabilities

Is there an option to define some or all structures to be held in-memory only.

yes

using MemoryDB

yes

volatile and lookup table

User concepts

Access control

Access rights for users can be defined per object

yes, based on authentication and database rules

simple password-based access control

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

Apache Cassandra is the leading NoSQL, distributed database management system, well...
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Competitive advantages

No single point of failure ensures 100% availability . Operational simplicity for...
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Typical application scenarios

Internet of Things (IOT), fraud detection applications, recommendation engines, product...
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Key customers

Apple, Netflix, Uber, ING,, Intuit,Fidelity, NY Times, Outbrain, BazaarVoice, Best...
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Market metrics

Cassandra is used by 40% of the Fortune 100.
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Licensing and pricing models

Apache licenseÂ Pricing for commercial distributions provided by DataStax and available...
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